Sepsis Strategy

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Anchor lead: Can we head off sepsis with a simple
strategy? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Vitamin C, one of the B vitamins, and steroids. A simple
combination that seemed to help in one observational trial of people with
sepsis, that bodywide infection that is the number one cause of death, a recent
Lancet study states. Brian Garibaldi, a critical care medicine expert at Johns
Hopkins, says now that more rigorous studies are in, hopes have been dashed.

Garibaldi: Unfortunately when applied to a larger group of
patients that have sepsis it’s not been shown to have any benefit in terms of
mortality. There’s still are several studies that are ongoing with combinations
of vitamin C, with or without thiamine, with or without steroids, so it’s still
possible that some of these studies might show some benefit to this treatment
but I think seeing that the combination of vitamin C with thiamine and steroids
compared to just steroids alone did not lead to a difference in mortality I
think was disappointing.   :29

Garibaldi notes that awareness of sepsis and prompt
initiation of treatment are having an impact on the condition. At Johns
Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.